Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. What I said was that there are no major issues or complaints brought to our attention. With any rollout of various programs or projects in the communities, there is always room for improvement. Those are just some of the areas that come into play where teachers ask certain questions about the JK delivery or an avenue that they can turn to. There is ongoing communication dialogue between my department, DEAs and DECs and, also, working with various organizations that are currently delivering the Junior Kindergarten program. I’m a firm believer that there needs to be an open communication dialogue. If there is room for improvement, I would like to hear about it and how we can improve programming for the second phase and third phase and so forth.

I would suggest that these complaints go way beyond what the Minister is suggesting how we can improve the program. These are issues with the current implementation. We have seen the public consultative process design for the feedback on the devolution process. Basically, go to our website and send us a note.

What is the process in place for ECE to gather, catalogue and respond to complaints from early childhood education workers and the public about start-up and emerging problems with Junior Kindergarten in the NWT, or do we not have one?

Mahsi. When we first rolled out the JK a couple of months ago, we knew that there needs to be a response team. We did establish a Junior Kindergarten response team made up of regional representatives and also from ECE perspectives. So they are the ones who are giving us advice, suggestions and making some changes along the way. Not only that, from the general public, the professionals, the teachers, the parents, there is also a hotline within my department that we’ve established so we can hear the general public’s perspective on delivery of the Junior Kindergarten in the 23 communities, the regional perspective and, also, a Yellowknife three-phased approach. Mahsi.

Thank you. From what I hear anecdotally from constituents and those involved, there is a chill in the ranks of ECE surrounding any acknowledgements of difficulty with the implementation of this program, and this goes for the regions.

What direction has the Minister and his senior staff given to regional staff on procedures for dealing

with complaints about Junior Kindergarten from ECE workers and the public?

Mahsi. There are various avenues. As I stated, there is a hotline on the website and also on the phone and the response team that consists of the regional representatives from my Department of Education, Culture and Employment to bring any concerns, to bring any ideas on how to deliver this particular program. So any other forms of communication, there’s always, as I stated before, room for improvement, how we can best communicate to the parents, to the teachers, to the children that we are teaching. So we’re doing what we can to be transparent and be accountable for the best delivery of this program. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly this doesn’t fit with what I’m hearing. In the real world, the introduction of a large, complex program such as JK would be expected to generate some complaints, both with a philosophy of the program’s mechanics of its implementation.

Does the Minister still insist that there have been zero complaints from the implementation of Junior Kindergarten across the NWT, with the exception of that raised by the Member from Mackenzie Delta, or if not, what are some of the complaints and how have they been dealt with? Mahsi.

Mahsi. As I stated, there is no major issue or complaint about the delivery of Junior Kindergarten in 23 of our smaller or remote communities. There’s been some questions here and there, more clarification from the teachers that are teaching our Junior Kindergarten. They are being trained.

So, as I stated before, there hasn’t been much of a major issue or complaint brought to my attention as Minister responsible. But with any issues or concerns that are brought forward by the teachers or the principals or the organizations, we follow up with them, and I can provide some of the detailed information that we’ve heard to the Members as well. Mahsi.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member’s statement earlier today, I talked about a non-government organization doing really great work on behalf of the government for residents of the Northwest Territories. I’d like to ask the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs today, how does this government fund certain types

of sports organizations, such as the NWT Rec and Parks Association, Sport North, all these organizations that do really good work in promoting health and wellness in the Northwest Territories.

How is funding allocated to these sport organizations through this government? Thank you

Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The funding is distributed by the NWT Sport and Rec Council based on an application process. This is approved by the Minister. So that’s how all the organizations get their funding through the Sport and Rec Council. Thank you.

Thank you. Since it’s been an application-based request for funding, I know when we go through this budget process, whether it’s O and M, or the O and M budget especially, a lot of our departments will put in a forced growth aspect to the department’s getting their funding, but I’m not too sure if that happens at the NGO level, especially when we’re giving funding through the Sport and Rec Council.

I’d like to ask the Minister, is forced growth, such as increased wages, increased costs to travel to the communities, taken into consideration and is that affected into the year-to-year operations and budgets of these organizations. Thank you.

These organizations submit budgets and the funding is application-based. So we assume that they’re calculating their own forced growth as part of their application. Thank you.

I know that every year through the SRC, they have a certain amount of budgets. So they always look at if they won’t get the revenues that they usually do, then they’ll have to be looking at possibly cutting down programs or services in other areas.

Would the Minister or the department look at possibly subsidizing, should the revenues be lower, some of these programs so they can continue? Is that something the department has looked at, some type of subsidy moving forward, should revenues within the SRC not reach what they were in the previous year? Thank you.

A lot of the funding that we approve and the Sport and Rec Council distributes to the organizations is dependent on the lottery monies that we receive with all our terminals across the Northwest Territories. They’ll be made aware that if the lottery monies are down and our revenue is down, then that may affect their application. I’m sure many of them take into consideration the fact that our revenues are down and they may not get exactly what they got last

year. But we try to make every effort to ensure that all these programs are funded and that they’re able to deliver the programs to the folks on the front line. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This government has done a lot of work in the area of prevention and promotion and health and wellness awareness.

Has the Department of MACA looked at partnering with other departments, such as ECE or Health and Social Services, to do a collaborative effort should some of these fundings be not as high as they used to be, but also having a more collaborative effort in terms of doing healthy eating, active living and putting them all together and that way they can share the ultimate benefit in terms of education awareness? Thank you.

Thank you. We are partners with ECE and Health and Social Services through the Healthy Choices initiative and some of the programs that we work with through the Active After School Program and we have a food program that’s pretty well fully subscribed to. I think just about every community and school in the Northwest Territories receives money, except one, through the Active After School Program. So we work with our colleagues over at ECE and Health and Social Services to try and access as much money as we can that we pass on to communities to deliver all the important programs that they run in small communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister responsible for the Workers’ Safety and Compensation Commission. I want to mention a couple of things to set the background here.

Our Occupational Health and Safety Regulations are over 22 years old and some four years ago, in September of 2010, the WSCC Safety Advisory Committee started to do revisions on these very outdated Occupational Health and Safety Regulations. These regulations govern workers everywhere in the NWT, and after a lot of work, an initial draft was completed and distributed for consultation and there was a huge outcry across the territory, particularly industry and especially the construction industry. So they had further consultations. They did, I think, two or three more drafts and then the Safety Advisory Committee determined that the regulations were complete and

they were sent to the Minister for approval. That was in January of 2012, literally years ago.

My first question to the Minister: What is the reason that we are still using 22-year-old regulations when we’ve had a new set of regulations ready for almost three years? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister responsible, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the Member is correct about the Safety Advisory Committee did some work in this area and it is almost 22 years that we haven’t made any changes. There have been several attempts to update this particular act, the regulations, but they were unsuccessful over the past nine years.

What’s happening now is that recommendations came forward and there should be more engagement, consultation with the general public, the industries and various organizations representative of industries, businesses, governments and unions. So that did occur and now the recommendations are within my office as well.

We just want to make sure that we cover all areas and listen to various parties. There have been pros and cons of these particular regulations. It’s part of a large document, quite a bit of change that is coming, so we just want to make sure that we cover all grounds. We’d like to sign off during the life of this Assembly. Mahsi.